A Social Dilemma Analysis of Commuting Preferences: The Roles of Social Value Orientation and Trust1

The current research advances a social dilemma analysis of commuting, examining the roles of preexisting personality differences in social value orientation (i.e., prosocial vs. proself orientation) and trust (i.e., a general belief in the honesty and cooperative intentions of others) in determining preferences for collectively desirable commuting options: preferences for commuting by public transportation (Study 1) and carpooling (Study 2). Consistent with predictions, both studies revealed that, relative to p of prosocials, preferences of proselfs were more strongly associated with beliefs about the relative efficiency of cars (i.e., an outcome affecting personal well-being). Also, greater preferences for collectively desirable actions were observed among prosocials with high trust—relative to prosocials with low trust and proselfs with high or low trust—providing support for the claim that 2 conditions (i.e., prosocial goals and trust in others) must be met to obtain collectively desirable commuting preferences.     

Pupil perceptions of counselling: A response to Murgatroyd

Counselling has usually been thought of as client-centred. Recent studies suggest that many counsellors are perceived as senior teachers and are not approached by pupils on a personal basis. An example is given of a client-centred counsellor who appears to command the personal confidence of pupils, as evidenced by pupils' recorded perceptions of his role. Questions are posed regarding the future of counselling in schools.     

An Assessment of the Psychometric Adequacy of the British Adaptation of the Career Development Inventory

The concept of 'vocational maturity' is defined, and the development of methods for assessing it is briefly outlined. The adaptation of one such measure - Super's Career Development Inventory - is described, and some results are reported from a study designed to assess the psychometric adequacy of this adaptation. These showed the measure to be reliable enough for use with groups but not with individuals. Scores were found to be more highly related to concomitant variables than to direct measures of vocational maturity, though this may have been due to the poor quality of some of the latter. The convergent validity of the measure was supported, but the discriminant validity was not. The implications of these results for using the measure, and particularly the need for further development work, are briefly considered. It is suggested that such work will also need to address the utility of the construct itself for Britain in the 1980s.     

Response and encoding factors in “ignoring” irrelevant information

Subjects classified either the numerosity or numeric value of elements in successive stimulus displays. In separate experiments, responses were indicated by oral naming, card sorting, manual tapping, and oral “tapping.” Incongruent levels of numeric value slowed naming and sorting, but not tapping, when numerosity was the cue for responding. Incongruent numerosity slowed tapping, but not naming and sorting, when numeric value was the cue. Changes in stimulus response mapping may thus critically alter the ability to ignore an irrelevant stimulus dimension.     

RELATIVE EFFECTIVENESS OF TEACHER ATTENTION AND THE “GOOD BEHAVIOR GAME” IN MODIFYING DISRUPTIVE CLASSROOM BEHAVIOR1

A variety of behavioral procedures have been employed in recent years to modify disruptive classroom behavior. Such methods have been developed with the belief that curtailing disruptive behavior would strengthen positive classroom performance. In this study, two procedures, the good behavior game and the teacher-attention method, were compared to determine short-run effectiveness. Four teachers (two fourth-grade and two fifth-grade) implemented both methods in their classrooms over a five-week period. Presentation of methods was alternated in a counterbalanced design to control for order effects. Each of the four classrooms consisted of 25 students. A time-sampling procedure was used to record the presence or absence of disruptive behavior within 15-second intervals. Disruptive behavior was defined as any talking-out or out-of-seat behavior without permission. The results indicated that both procedures were effective in modifying disruptive classroom behavior, but that the good behavior game reduced disruptive behavior significantly better than the teacher-attention method. In addition, all teachers preferred the game to the teacher-attention procedure. This reaction seemed related to the effort involved in initiating the two activities. The good behavior game required less effort on the teacher's part. However, use of the game alone raises certain ethical considerations. One such issue involves abuse of peer pressure. Also, there is a possibility that negative rules may tend to promote resentment. Positively stated rules would ameliorate that problem. Another relates to the possibility that some teachers might be carried away by the ease of the game's implementation to the extent that behavior control becomes the primary objective in the classroom. As a result, one might consider use of the game to maximize short-term change, but then phase out this procedure in favor of another method (e.g., teacher attention) for long-run effects.     

The role of reporting in the evaluation of rape victims

In three studies, we examined how individuals evaluate a rape victim based on whether she reports or does not report her rapist. Across all three studies, a victim who did not report the perpetrator was evaluated more negatively than a victim who did report the perpetrator. In Studies 2 and 3, symbolic concerns (the view that the victim’s actions violated shared values and disempowered herself) mediated the effect of reporting on evaluation of the victim. The effects of the victim’s relationship to the perpetrator (Study 1) and the victim’s decision to forgive the perpetrator (Study 2) were also examined. Results indicate that observers evaluate victims who do not report their perpetrators more negatively, and that this evaluation may be the result of perceptions of not reporting rape as a transgression.     

The effects of a public address system on the off-task behavior of elementary physical education students

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of teacher feedback delivered via a public address system on the off-task behavior of elementary-school physical education students. A multiple baseline design across three classes was used in this investigation. Results indicated a consistent decline in off-task behavior when the public address feedback system was used.     

Global visual completion of quasi-regular shapes

The topic of amodal completion has often been investigated by using partly occluded shapes that are regular. In research that has typically been done with displays such as these regular shapes, it has been shown that global aspects of a shape can determine completion. To see how robust these global influences in the completion process are, we investigated quasi-regular shapes, ie shapes with a certain overall regularity but not based on metrical identities. First, in experiment 1 participants had to complete quasi-regular shapes in a drawing task. Then, in experiment 2 the primed-matching paradigm was used. Results from both experiments provided evidence for global completions. In experiment 3 we found that multiple global completions can be primed, which, as a control experiment showed, cannot be explained by some inability of the visual system to see the difference between the different completions. These data support the notion that global influences on visual occlusion are apparent even when the partly occluded stimulus is outside the domain of regular shapes. Implications for a global approach are provided.